Tuesday, 2 April 2013

Alnmouth Bay

This afternoon a walk from Birling Carr to the Aln estuary along the beach and then back through the links produced no wheatear but sadly another three dead puffins.
We saw: 32 common scoters, two kestrels, two shelduck, seven curlew, a pair of stonechat, seventeen mute swans, 39 whooper swans, twenty goldfinch, six linnets, two blackbirds, a robin and two displaying and singing skylark.
No plants in flower.
I have known this stretch of the coast on and off for nearly thirty years and so have seen changes in the nature of the beach but the onshore winds over the last three weeks with spring tides have produced dramatic new features. There has been a lot of dune face erosion but the most interesting effect has been the scouring away of sand revealing large areas of sandstone around Birling Carr. The rectilinear jointing pattern makes the rock platforms seem as if the council had been laying new pavements.